The Programmer
by Chris7221
Summary: Long premise short, I end up in the Mass Effect universe, with programming-esque reality-warping powers. But with great power comes great responsibility, and great opportunity for misuse. Godlike SI. Warning: The website's censors broke most of the programming.
1. entry point

I'm back, and I'm bored.

Long premise short, I end up in the Mass Effect universe, with programming-esque reality-warping powers. It's inspired by some of the fics I've been reading recently, as well as my playthrough of Scribblenauts Unlimited and my current projects. Also, I was bored. It's not meant to be taken too seriously, and there will be lots of references to both other fiction and nerd culture. I don't want to give too much away, but I will say that this: _With great power comes great responsibility, and great potential for misuse._

I will warn you in advance that it is deliberately VERY heavy on technobabble, nerdy references, and fake code. The more normal members of this forum may have trouble understanding some of it.

* * *

XCVG Systems presents...  
**The Programmer**

I wish I could say I have some badass origin story to go with the badass escapades that follow. Like some science experiment gone horribly wrong, or an elaborate setup involving multiple verses and a crossover in our home universe. Hell, even the classic "inexplicably magical video game exploded" or "random omnipotent being brought me here for no apparent reason" excuse would be better than what I've got. But no, the last thing I remember from Before (yes, I capitalized it, and yes, I'm gonna keep capitalizing it) is trying not to fall asleep in Matrix Algebra.

I wonder if I succeeded. With my record, probably not.

Anyway, my first memory of After (capitalizing that too) was waking up in a dark alley. That freaked me out pretty good. I could describe my reaction, but I would rather save my dignity if you please.

Okay, fine. There was much swearing. And some crying. I'm not going into any more detail.

After getting a hold of myself, I reached for my phone, hoping it hadn't killed its battery by itself. Fortunately, it hadn't, but it was reporting no signal. Shit. I try the GPS. It promptly locked up and crashed. I held the power button down for seven seconds to reboot.

Fucking Thebyani 4.3. Awesome ROM in a lot of ways, but glitchy and horribly outdated. Knew I should have flashed CM10.2.

I looked around a bit, and couldn't see shit. Too fucking dark. Damn it, where the fuck am I?

_class Location(Coordinate coord, Object initialMarker)_

_ (enum returnType, int detailLevel)_

Those words came out of nowhere. And this is going to get very important later, so you better pay attention. Those words weren't in my field of vision, nor were they in my mind's eye, yet they didn't feel like thoughts either. They were just there, like a sense almost, like seeing or hearing or smelling, yet at the same time, distinct from senses.

It's a lot easier to explain to people who have used neural interfaces.

So I used one of the commands. By thought. I didn't have to move my eyes, or make motions with my arms, or anything like that. But it required deliberate action, it's not like just thinking about it makes it happen. It felt as natural as breathing or talking, even though I'd never done it before at that point. And it seemed like half of it was automatic, yet I didn't feel out of control.

_ (HumanReadableString);_

_current location is Citadel_

Like I said, it's hard to explain to someone who hasn't used a neural interface. Now let's be clear on something- it's not a neural interface. But explaining it to someone who's used a neural interface is like explaining colour to creature with monochrome vision, as opposed to explaining it to a creature with no eyes at all.

I was actually halfway through muttering a paragraph very much like that when I realized _holy shit the Citadel like Mass Effect Citadel or Half-Life 2 Citadel or La Citadelle and what the fuck I need to calm down some._

_ (int confidence)_

_ (int excitability)_

_ (Flag flag, bool state)_

Why the hell not? Somehow I knew what values did what, mostly. Higher is more extreme, who would have thought?

_ (150);_

_ (50);_

_ ( , true);_

I was then magically much more calm and confident in my abilities. My next thought, was, of course, laughing at the fact that the universe was object oriented. If this was the universe. Maybe it's a simulation or something. I need more info. First, location.

_ (HumanReadableString,5);_

_Corridor 15-67, Tayseri Ward, Citadel, Milky Way, UniverseMassEffect_

Ah, okay, so I was right the first time. Well this could be pretty cool. I just wish it got the date too. No, don't tell me how to do it! I want to do it myself!

_ (HumanReadableString);_

_Exception methodUndefinedForObjectException_

Well shit. Huh, maybe if I- no, don't give me the answer! I want to figure this out myself, damn it!

_ (HumanReadableString);_

_Exception classesAreNotObjectsYouFuckingMoronException_

At least the universe has a sense of humour. Fine, whatever you are, I concede. Give me the correct method.

_ (ISO8601);_

_2083-11-11_

That was a really fucking long time to get date and location. It occurred to me just after I had stepped through that long process that I could have just asked Avina. And I still don't know what that means in relation to anything else!

_ (Date date, Event event)_

I'm filling this out myself this time.

_ ( (),EdenPrime);_

_Exception objectTypeMismatch(expected Event, got Location)_

At least the exceptions are helpful. I decided to try it a few more times.

_ ( (),EdenPrimeAttack);_

_Exception ambiguousObjectReferenceException_

_ ( (),EdenPrimeAttack2183);_

_Exception nullPointerException_

_ ( (),getObjectFromDescription(Eden Prime Attack 2183));_

_Exception dataTypeMismatchException_

_ ( (),getObjectFromDescription("Eden Prime Attack 2183"));_

_7d7h5m39s_

It needed quotes! It needed goddamn quotes!

At that point I could quickly sum up what I knew in a few sentences. I have some kind of program related reality manipulation thing in my head. I am in Mass Effect. It is a week and change before the attack on Eden Prime.

That's... actually not very useful at all. Doesn't this thing have help?

_man_

_help_

_impmsg_

Suddenly you've gone from Java or C# to cmd or bash? Forget it. Let's read the important message.

_impmsg_

_************WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD**********_

_I know you like to read long things so I will keep this short._

_You are now a godlike being with programming-esque reality warping powers._

_That system will pretty much explain itself._

_You can die normally right now, but you can take steps to change that._

_You can do whatever you want, basically, but beware of the consequences._

_I'm not telling you why you're here. Figure it out yourself._

_Same goes for getting back._

_Oh, and if you decide to change Shepard's gender or something big like that, you should run reconcileChanges after to prevent things from going TOO horribly wrong._

_-Rob MacGuffin_

Huh, maybe I should check Shepard's gender. I relaxed a little and let the System (get used to that too) do most of the work.

_ ()_

_male_

Shepard is male? Fuck. That. Shit.

_ (female);_

_reconcileChanges();_

_reconciling changes:_

_ (female);_

_will change from male to female_

_associated changes (mandatory):_

_ : defaultFemale_

_ : defaultFemale_

_ .commanderShepard : femaleShepard_

_...7 others_

_associated changes (optional):_

_ : Character_

_...76 others_

_confirm changes?_

_yes_

_changes reconciling... done!_

Also, I am not typing in CommanderShepard every time I want to do anything to her. Er, that sounds wrong. But no, I decided right then and there that I was not going to type that, even mentally. Hey, I'd just got to the universe, cut me some slack!

_set_alias shep CommanderShepard;_

_Alias shep set!_

And now you're throwing some... I don't even know in there too. Nice. At this point I realized it was probably time to leave the alley. But a few things first...

_import .UniverseHalogen.*;_

_ ( .P92,1);_

_ ( .P92Magazine,5);_

_ ( .HolsterP92GenericSoft,1);_

_ ( ,1);_

_ (CitadelID);_

_ .(CitadelGunLicense);_

Holy crap, it actually worked! The devices appeared on my person, already attached in logical places. Pistol in holster on my hip, magazines in belt pouches, omni-tool on wrist. Great. Now I was ready to go.

Is that even proper English?

* * *

**Post-Upload A/N**

Wow, FFn really butchered the commands. I guess it thinks that they're URLs. Look, I get that you're trying to fight spam, but this is definitely into Scunthorpe Syndrome here. I doubt it'll ever get fixed, so you can either read this story over at Spacebattles, or just ignore the missing bits. No, I'm not changing the syntax. The universe is object-oriented.


	2. apt-get

From this point forward, a semicolon indicates an executed command, no semicolon means it was not executed. And yes, FFn is still breaking commands.

* * *

As I walk into the alleyway into the busy crowds of the Wards, I pause to consider my situation. Well, as much as someone dosed up on a (admittedly cheap) actor flag can, anyway.

Well, there's the vulnerability. I don't plan on getting into combat any time soon, but there are still a lot of ways to die here. Fortunately, there's an easy fix for that when you can BEND THE UNIVERSE TO YOUR WILL.

_god;_  
"_god" is not a recognized command or function_

Crap. And I'm not getting any subconscious guidance this time either.

_tgm;_  
"_tgm" is not a recognized command or function_

_buddha;_  
"_buddha" is not a recognized command or function_

Double crap. Maybe it expects me to set a flag?

_ (godmode,true);  
Exception InvalidFlagException  
(invincible,true);  
Exception InvalidFlagException  
(nodamage,true);  
Exception InvalidFlagException  
(NODAMAGE,true);  
Exception InvalidFlagException  
(noDamage,true);  
Exception cAPITALIZATIONiSnOTgOINGtOmAKEtHATavALIDfLAGeXCEPT ION_

Crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap! Wait...

_iddqd;  
Degreelessness Mode Enabled_

Ahem. Moving on then. I'm curious about a few things.

_ (ISO8601);  
Exception NullPointerException_

Okay, so the universe _is_ case sensitive. Take that ACS! Let's try something else.

_for(int i = 0; i 3;i-)_

print("Hello World!");

Hello World  
Hello World  
Hello World  
Hello World  
Hello World  
Hello World

Oh shit _Hello World_ infinite loop _Hello World_ MAKE IT STOP!

_ ... no! Bad idea!;  
Exception DontTryToKillYourselfException  
Hello World_

Exception NullPointerException  
Hello World

script terminated

I'm not trying that again. Incidentally, I now know that I can make scripts. If this universal language is not complete shit, I'll be able to write some, store them, and execute and terminate them on the fly. It could be interesting, especially if script activators are a thing. But now my head hurts and I don't want to do that right now.

I should probably figure out the basic necessities of living first. Like money, a place to stay, a car, and a new graphics card. Okay, scratch the last one. It occurs to me that I can spawn a $20,000 workstation with four terabytes of SSD and quad Titans, but that would be hilariously outdated now. Damn you, Moore! Let's start with an apartment.

_sudo apt-get "nice apartment on the nicer end of the ward";  
Exception ThisIsNotLinuxTheSyntaxIsWrongAndThatsNotWhatAptGe tDoesAnywayException_

What is with these exceptions? It's like my subconscious mind is molding them to be hilarious or something. A few people give me funny looks as I appear to laugh at basically nothing.

_notarget;  
NoTarget enabled_

There. Fixed. On second thought, this is creepy. One guy just walked into me, bounced and kept going, muttering something about phantom space elves.

_notarget;  
NoTarget disabled_

Enough fucking around. Time to get serious. This is about the point where someone from the verse shows up to help me get on my feet, usually in a dramatic fashion...

Nope, nothing. Looks like I'm on my own. I _could_ spawn one in, probably, but that's opening a can of worms I don't want to open quite yet. Plus, I can't for the life of me think of who to spawn. I'm not very creative.

Let's go apartment shopping. Legitimately, not reality hax.

_ (Credits,1000000);_

Well, kind of legitimately. People are again staring, probably because I'm wearing 21st century clothes (that's easy to fix), I'm standing there like an idiot and I probably have the strangest look on my face ever. But I'm hacking reality, damn it! Well, programming it anyway. I notice a flash of blue and casually begin to walk toward it. Avina may be an annoying, um, thing, but she could be genuinely useful in my situation.

When I get closer, though, I realize what I thought was the Avina terminal was actually an asari chatting with a hanar. It was maybe fifty metres, probably less, I suck at distance estimates. I'm nearsighted as hell, but I only wear my glasses when I have to, which is when I'm driving or when I'm in a classroom. This was neither of those places, and glasses would probably look hilariously misplaced in the 22nd century anyway. I casually stroll away.

Maybe the omni-tool is a better idea. I tap the silver band attached to my wrist, and a blue hologram comes up. It's kind of fuzzy and monochrome. That's disappointing- it pales in comparison to the AMOLED display on my phone, though that has the disadvantage of not being holographic. Still, it's a goddamn hologram, and that is amazingly cool considering the state of holographic technology today... yesterday... Before. I'm tempted to just stare at it and poke random things. Because it's a hologram.

It occurs to me that my response to the holographic system might be similar to the hypothesized scenario of bringing someone from the 50's into today's world... er, Before. Awesome technology that has become absolutely mundane. I possess in my pocket a computer capable of accessing the collective knowledge of mankind. I use it to play silly games, look at pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers.

Fortunately for me, the menu system is pretty simple (too simple in my opinion) and labelled in English, or a bastardized 22nd century variant of it if the labels of "Vid" and "Muzic" are anything to go by. I select Extranet and enter "real estate" in the address bar... thing. I get a Google-like list of results. Cool.

There's a little button with three triangles in the corner, and I tap it. It sends me back to the (blank) homepage. Not sure if that means "homepage" or "back", but either way, why three triangles? The one beside it is similar, but upside down, and it gets me back to the list. Finally, on the end is a circle with some lines radiating out of one corner. I tap that and it brings up another row of icons.

I'm going to murder whoever designed this interface. You think Metro is bad until you've seen this piece of shit. But hey, maybe I'm just biased because I don't know that a fucking forward slash with lines through it is "sort by location".

I'm serious. It took me five minutes of hammering random buttons to figure that out. I think I may have also downloaded some porn and a virus or two by accident. To be fair, it would probably be much more intuitive to people who actually grew up here. Still, it feels like shit going from tech-savvy to tech-retarded in the space of under an hour.

Finally, I find an office that seems to be close by, a branch of the (very creatively named) Citadel Realty. I tap the slanted-parallelepiped-whatsit icon and a map comes up, showing the location, me, and the intended route. It's not far. In fact, it's literally just around the corner.

That's close enough to walk, even for a fatass like me (I should fix that too), and I haven't figured out teleporting yet so I just walk there. I get more strange looks, they're beginning to bother me a bit but I ignore them. Clothes later. Home base first.

The office isn't fancy, but it's pretty nice. It's located to one side of the bottom storey of a big tower. The walls are the same tinted gray that I remember from the game, and there's a window in the front. Inside are a few chairs, a reception desk, and a potted plant that looks like it could eat me. I'm tempted to despawn the fucker.

_ ()_

No. I'm getting an apartment without any hacking except for the money in the first place. I turn my back to the alien mutant plant.

"Name?" the bored-looking asari calls from the desk. I ignore it, despite standing right in front of her. Hey, how am I supposed to know she's talking to me? She asks again, "Your name, sir?"

"Call me Roy." Really? The best you could think of was an obscure reference to an obscure reference?

"Your ID says otherwise." How she manages to sound flat and bored yet accusatory amazes even me.

"Uh, it's an old human joke," I stutter out. Double really?

"Right." Was that a slight eye roll? "Is there something I can help you with?"

"I'm looking to buy," I reply. That sounds really slick, but it actually came out very awkward and weird sounding. Like I had something stuck in my throat.

"Where? How much?" How a human- er, asari can sound so mechanical I don't know.

"Something decently sized, maybe, uh, two bedrooms, kitchen, dining, living and den? On the wards, but near the Presidium."

"This is the _Citadel_. You _are_ aware of current market trends?"

I try to smile but I think it failed, because she's frowning at me. "Enlighten me."

"You're looking at half a million credits. More if you want a view, less if you're willing to give up some space."

"That's fine. What's available? Something nearby, if you will."

Type type type. It's oddly silent, that holographic keyboard. Not like my G710+... damn, if I'm doing any writing I'll have to spawn in one of those. "There's a condominium two buildings clockwise from here. Would you like to take a tour?"

"I'd love to." Another failed smile, another frown.

Instead of standing up, she types some more, and a holographic interface pops up on the desk. It shows a fairly compact, not tiny but perhaps _cozy_ living room. I see a futuristic table, futuristic TV, and futuristic sofa. Again I tap random things, and I manage to navigate to the bedroom (small), kitchen (really small), and den (surprisingly big). It looks good enough- hell, I don't know how to shop for homes in Before!

"How much?"

"Half a million credits, half a million and a half with transfer fees."

I have unlimited moneys. "All right, let's do it."

She hands me another device. "Tap, wave, or insert your credit chit here. We recommend you insert, sometimes the device malfunctions otherwise."

I silently hope that I didn't spawn a million credit chits as I search my pocket. Nope, just the one. I insert it and the asari is slightly surprised when it lights up green.

"Biometric ID and omni-tool sync, please."

"Um, how do I do that?"

She looks at me like I'm insane, but composes herself. "Fingerprint on the scanner, omni-tool in the slot."

I do so, and after some fiddling it beeps at me. "Done. It will take a moment for the transaction to process."

"That easy?"

"Yes, sir. This is not the twenty-first century." Oh, that is just too ironic to be a coincidence.

"I didn't catch your name," I say as she types away. I can tell that didn't go well because she's really frowning now.

The asari fingers her nametag. "It's Lyia. Can you not read?"

"I'm, uh, nearsighted. Myopic. Literally."

"Sure. And I've had wet fever." She taps a few commands into her terminal and my omni-tool beeps. "Done."

"Thank you." Oh god, that sounded really insincere.

"Asshole," I hear her mutter as I walk away.

Did I piss in her cereal?

"Nice going," a grumbly voice says into my ear. "It's an asari firm. You just broke almost every rule of etiquette and doing business."

I turn to see a turian towering over me. Holy shit, those guys are kind of scary in real life. Big and oddly shaped and scaly. Before he walks away he adds a rude, "Humans."

Oops.

As soon as I've made my way to the apartment, I kick back and relax. I have no idea what time it is, but I'm tired. Tomorrow, I'll play around with my tools some more and make some plans. Well, one of the two. Half assed. Maybe I'll just decorate.

I'm lazy.

_killall Reapers_

But not quite that lazy.


	3. objects

I made some slight changes to the syntax. Also, real is a magical real number primitive data type. complex is also a primitive data type. Explicit casting from complex to real is going to be messy...

Also, I'm starting to use underline where italics would generally be used, to avoid confusion and cause a different kind of confusion. If that makes any sense.

3: objects

_ ( , false);_

It probably would have been better to clear the super easy adaptation flag tomorrow, instead of before trying to sleep.

Without going into the embarassing details, my thought process went something like this.

You are all alone, in another universe.

Everyone you know is inaccessable to you, even if they may not be dead per se. If this is really the future, then they're dead, but if this is a parallel reality, they're not, except they are, and not... How does time work across parallel realities again? It doesn't matter, you can't contact them and they can't contact you and they're effectively gone to you.

Remember how terrifying moving out and being alone sounded? Well now you've moved out, and you're alone. And this isn't Vancouver or Calgary or Toronto or even London, this is the fucking Citadel. It's a goddamn space station full of aliens.

Your parents are probably worried about you, but then again, maybe not. Time across universes. It could be years for you here and a moment back home. Fuck. I can't think fourth dimensionally!

The few friends you had are similarly gone. Not that they would look for you anyway. Except they might. You've never been a good judge of character, but they seemed like assholes on the surface and much better beneath. Of course, your parting words were pretty rude.

You're a fish out of water. No, scratch that, like a delicate plant in a refractory furnace. Ew, plants. Then again, you have lots of awesome powers. You know what, fuck it, enough angst.

_ ( , true);_

_ (10);_

Ah, much better. I can barely even feel the effects now. But now I'm having some other thoughts.

This is about the point when I'm supposed to start realizing this is not a game, but to be honest, it still doesn't feel real. I'm basically all CHIM'ed up in a fantasy land. Though there's some philosophical stuff creeping into my mind...

I hate serious philosophical shit. I need a distraction. Let's DECORATE!

First things first. I wonder if the universe has a home system like Essentials for Bukkit.

_tphome_

_sethome_

_clearhome_

I'll take that as a yes.

_sethome;_

_home citapt$889E2AFF4 set!_

Um... no way I'm going to remember that.

_set_alias condo citapt$889E2AFF4;_

_Alias condo set!_

I wonder what the future has for computers. It will probably be easier to check using in-universe catalogues or something rather than trying to hack my way through lookup commands.

I future-Google for "personal computer". Lots of references to omni-tools and a few extranet terminals. I guess there isn't much market for desktops anymore when your omni-tool can do everything. Next I try "workstation".

I get a lot of results this time. Lots of neat-looking little boxes with fancy holographic screens and equally awful holographic keyboards. They all seem to run the same OS and the same software, so I pick the most expensive one I can find. The Miratech M990AX.

Cool name, but I need something that the universal parser will understand.

_classLookup("Miratech M990AX");_

_4 matches in namespace UniverseMassEffect: mtech990AX2180, mtech990AX2181, mtech990AX2182, mtech990AX2183_

Now how do you spawn stuff?

_Object myComputer = new mtech990AX2183()_

_spawn myComputer_

That's pretty long. Is there a quicker way to do this?

_spawn mtech990AX2183;_

That's better. Except it just spawned right in front of me at eye level and dropped three feet to the floor instead of on the desk like I want it. Good thing it spawned the machine in its colourful retail box instead of just a mess of cables and wires.

I spend the next half hour or so unpacking the box and marvelling at the sleek little machine. And by marvelling, I mean simultaneously being impressed and unimpressed by it. The holographic hybrid monitor thing just looks like an LCD with a fancy stand. The machine itself is the size of a mini-ITX box with lots of small ports on it, and finished in sleek silver metal. The side just pops off, and disappointingly it's just relatively mundane circuit boards inside, although the cooling fan looks like a miniature Air Multiplier and it's packed pretty tight.

Plugging everything in is pretty foolproof. Waving your omnitool over the box brings up very clear instructions, everything is labelled, and everything only fits one way. And there are only like three wires anyway.

I probably pissed away an hour just messing with the OS, but I'll spare the details that I don't remember anyway. WSOS is kind of like Windows, except everything is in strange (but strangely logical) places and it's all in 3D. You can pull windows out and push them in, as well as swiping them around. It connected to the extranet automatically, and I wasted no time in pissing away a thousand credits on faster access.

I really hated the holographic controller thingy, though.

_spawn (classLookup("Logitech G710+")[0]);_

_spawn (classLookup("Logitech G700")[0]);_

Wow, I was not expecting that to work. One small box and one larger box fall onto the floor in front of me, and I quickly rip them open to get at the mechanical Logitech goodness inside. Then I realize that USB is not a thing in 2183.

_spawn (classLookup("USB to UPB adapter")[0]);_

Now I can plug them in! Amazingly, it seems to work right away without having to install any drivers. Sensitivity's a bit high, though, and I don't know how to change that.

It occurs to me at this point that I probably should have put this all in the den, not in my room. Eh, maybe I can use the den for storing guns or something.

Using commands is cool, but it doesn't give a good sense of spacial relationships. Um, that's a fancy way of saying that I don't know where stuff is going to end up when I spawn it. Isn't there something like a toolgun?

_ ( ,1)_

Sure.

_ ( ,1);_

A sleek grey pistol appears in my hand. It has a bunch of buttons and a screen (almost said LCD, but it could be OLED or something more exotic) on the back, a trigger where the trigger should be, and a crystal emitter thing on the front.

Now we're cooking with gas. It has two buttons that cycle through modes, and one of them is spawn.

_ (Glock17);_

I pull the trigger, and an Austrian-made (well, theoretically) polymer pistol appears on the wall where I had the gun pointed. It is immediately subjected to gravity and falls down to the floor. I pull the trigger a few more times until I have a small pile of pistols that I don't need.

_ (void)_

That's actually really handy!

_ ();_

_ ();_

_ ();_

_ ();_

No more Glocks. I'll have to play with the toolgun later. For now, let's fuck with me. Uh, that didn't come out right. No! That's worse!

First, glasses. No.

_ (nearSighted, false);_

Holy shit, the world is really really clear now! Almost unnervingly so!

_ (real blurFactor)_

No, I'd prefer to just get used to it. But thanks, automatic suggestion thing in my brain.

_ (this);_

We have wizards to do things? Well that makes things easier. Okay, this looks like the Create-A-Sim-Tool had an illegitimate child with AutoCAD. I use the word looks liberally- this setup is in the same place the commands are, that indescribable programming area. I get a nice preview, a bevy of controls, a prompt, the works. It's unbelievably intuitive, probably because it's in my head.

I could make some dramatic changes, like making me a woman or Hispanic or something, but I figured I would keep it reasonable. I drop eighty pounds and add about twenty or forty back in as muscle- it's a slider, it's not precise. Then I get that haircut I've been putting off, clean up my facial hair a bit, and move on to clothing.

What do people even wear in the future? Keeping the wizard open in my brain, I plop myself down in the cheap ugly chair that came with the apartment and log back on to the extranet. A quick search of "human male fashion" reveals that although the usual wear is either a kind of formal suit thing or utilitarian-looking jumpsuits, there's quite a bit of latitude and variety based on social standing, careers, class, and other factors... yeah, I'm not reading the whole essay.

I decide to just go with a more futuristic version of my current outfit- a solid coloured t-shirt, cargo pants, and... whatever this kind of shoes is called. Satisfied, I close the tool.

Then I realize that I have nowhere to keep my gun. It's far too bulky to carry without a cover garment of some kind. But it's not like I need it- I can just spawn in a gun if I need one. I toss my weapon in the safe. Yes, the condo came with a safe. I didn't mention that?

After making me look human, my mind wander to other things. I wonder how much control I have over time. Like, can I undo things?

_revertEvent(Event event)_

_revertToDate(Date time)_

_revertToTime(Time time)_

_reconcileChanges(void)_

What about slowing time or speeding it up? 

_ (real perceptionSpeed)_

_ (real timeFactor)_

_ (void)_

So I'm invulnerable, I can change my appearance and physique at will, I can alter events, I can alter the flow of time, and I can spawn in whatever I want from whatever I want.

I can do whatever the fuck I want.


	4. abstraction

This is what one might refer to as a "wham episode".

void[4] **abstraction**

I'm in a fictional (and awesome) world with godlike powers of reality hackery.

I think everyone who's played Saints Row or Grand Theft Auto, any remotely similar game, has wondered what it's like to do all that crazy irresponsible shit. Of course, nobody (okay, maybe a few crazy people) has actually done it, because randomly stealing cars and driving them into things. ranks high on any sane person's list of Dumb Ways To Die. Even if you don't die, you're going to go to jail for a _very_ long time. Consequences are a bitch.

But like I said, I'm in a fictional (and awesome) world with godlike powers of reality hackery.

I don't have to worry about dying, because god mode.

I don't have to worry about resources, because spawn.

I don't have to worry about consequences, because actor flags.

Let's get this shit started.

Lights.

_import .UniverseHalo;_

_ (this,(classLookup("SPARTAN-II")[0]).getStats());_

_stats altered!_

_ ( .mjolnir6,1);_

_ ( .ma5c,1);_

_ ( .ma5cMagazine,10);_

Camera.

_import .UniverseSaintsRow;_

_summonfriend classLookup("Johnny Gat", UniverseSaintsRow)[0];_

_summonfriend classLookup("Shaundi", UniverseSaintsRow)[0];_

Action.

_ (( (2)).presidium,TPFLAG_BRINGFOLLOWERS);_

Instantly myself, Johnny, and Shaundi appear on the Presidium. It doesn't match the games exactly as far as I can tell, being a lot bigger for one. We seem to have emerged in the financial district, which although not as crowded as the wards is still pretty full of people.

I hate crowds.

"Where are we, and what are we doing here?" Shaundi asks from behind me. Damn, it's SRTT Shaundi and not Fun Shaundi. That's disappointing.

"That's a _very_ good question," Johnny adds. He turns to face me, eyes boring through my reflective visor. Uh, that's creepy. Let's take care of it.

_ (factionCSec);_

_ (factionCSec);_

There. Fixed. The two Saints immediately pull out weapons (from where, I don't know) and open fire on the nearest C-Sec officer, who happens to be a human about ten metres away from us. Bullets rip into his unarmored body.

The crowd immediately disperses, people beginning to run for cover. A few C-Sec officers emerge and begin to fire back at us, forcing my companions into cover. I don't bother, and raise my assault rifle.

The first officer goes down easy. She's an asari with no armor or shields, and the 7.62 NATO rounds of my MA5C tear through her, splattering bluish blood onto the grey flooring. My aim is perfect, just like the SPARTAN I artificially made myself into. Very little effort required.

Her partner is a tougher nut to crack. She's another asari, but she's a biotic and she managed to get her barriers up before I shoot her. The few bullets left in my magazine bounce off her barrier, and she throws a warp at me. I roll out of the way and slam a new magazine into my rifle at the same time.

That's a pretty damn sweet move. And I have no idea how I did it. Just kind of happened.

I empty the rest of the magazine into the asari, and discover two important facts about the MA5C. First, it kind of sucks against barriers. Second, it's not very accurate, but maybe that's just me. Either way I need a better weapon.

_ ( .rifleAvenger,1);_

_ ( .thermalClip,10);_

I toss the Halo assault rifle aside and shoulder the Avenger. Oh lovely. The smart linking doesn't work, and all I get is a generic reticle. Isn't there a _SmartLinkable_ interface defined somewhere?

The asari cop is forming another warp, and I quickly aim and fire. A barrage of mass accelerator rounds rip through her weakened barriers and her skull, and the biotic energy dissipates as she collapses.

"What the fuck?" Shaundi asks nobody in particular as more C-Sec officers swarm onto the scene.

"Just keep shooting! Shoot them before they shoot us!" Johnny shouts back. That's kind of a creepy exchange.

The civilians are either running or cowering now. I randomly shoot a few of them, just like No Russian. The first is a turian hiding behind a potted plant. He makes a horrible screeching gurgling noise as he dies and falls onto the pot, watering the plant with blue blood. I also shoot an asari in the leg, and she screams, and I shoot her again to shut her up. And then there's the pair of quarians running in a serpentine fashion. I cut their legs out from under them, and they continue to desperately crawl forward, leaving trails of blood behind them. Then I shoot a glass-looking sign until it shatters.

Huh. I expected wanton violence and destruction to be more satisfying.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Johnny bellows from behind me. "Shoot the cops!"

I follow his instructions for once, and with SPARTAN precision blow out the brains of a pair of turians. Zip zip zip. Splat splat splat. You'd think combat as a supersoldier would be more awesome, but it's actually kind of mechanical.

There are a bunch of patrol cars coming in for a landing, and it occurs to me that it's probably not a good idea to stay here. Especially since I forgot to give my followers armor.

Wait, can followers even die?

"Come on! Follow me!" I shout. Wow, this suit makes me sound like Master Chief. Okay, not really. But my voice is way deeper and more badass than it would be without it.

"Okay... wait why?" Johnny asks.

"Do you want to get shot? Just do it!" Shaundi shouts, standing up to follow.

I dash from our current position behind a railing to a line of parked aircars. I move really fast. Johnny and Shaundi move significantly slower. I wave them over, and we all take cover behind an expensive-looking blue aircar.

I reach for the door handle, but there's none there. "Fuck!"

_summon classLookup("Kinsie Kensington", UniverseSaintsRow)[0];_

"Kinsie, get the door open!" I shout as everyone's favourite crazy redhead hacker flashes into existence.

She gives me this look, apparently completely not caring that I'm a big cyborg in powered armor and we're being shot at. "Why should I? Who are you?"

Fuck! I forgot to use summonfriend! How do you set allegiance? Fortunately, my allied people have my back. Shaundi yells at Kinsie, "Just do it before we all die!"

"Okay, fine, sheesh. Give me something to hack with."

"Why do you need something to hack with?" I take cover instinctively as accelerator fire zips toward the aircar.

"You can't build a brothel out of air... er, bad metaphor. I need tools!" 

"God damn it Kinsie!" At that point the strangest thought occurs to me, but I quickly forget it as I fire back at the approaching officers, most of who take cover and avoid the bursts. Damn, the AI is good in this game.

_ ( ,1);_

"Oh, wow, this thing is cool," Kinsie says, bringing up the menu and tapping through it. I guess that's more interesting than the fact that it literally just materialized on her wrist. Then again, stranger things have happened- wait, is this SRTT Kinsie or SRIV Kinsie? "Should be just a couple of seconds."

A few seconds later, the door pops open. Johnny Gat calls, "Shotgun!"

I have no clue how to drive this thing. As I climb into the back seat, I order in an unnecessarily loud and harsh voice, "Get us out of here!"

"Do as he says!" Shaundi orders, climbing in beside me.

Damn, I was hoping I'd be able to drive at least, but in the heat of the moment getting away from the shooting took precedence over getting to drive the aircar. I mean, I really, really want to, but I figure it would be rude and maybe physically impossible to wrestle control away from Kinsie.

I like driving sequences.

Within seconds, Kinsie's figured out the controls, and we lift off. Most of the C-Sec aircars have landed, and we get a slight head start as they lift off and accelerate.

"So, what happened?" Kinsie asks, unperturbed by the fact we're being chased by flying cop cars.

"We pissed off the cops," I reply simply and evasively. At the risk of using one of the most cliche cliches ever, the tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife. I'm in a stolen aircar on the Citadel wearing MJOLNIR armor and conversing with some Saints. It's among the most awkward social situations imaginable.

"You pissed off the cops," Shaundi corrects archly. "I was about to rob a bank, I blacked out, and the next thing I know I have an uncontrollable urge to shoot at whoever the hell the police are here. Speaking of which, where the fuck are we and what are those _things_?"

"Aliens, obviously," Kinsie says. "We're on a space station. You can tell because-"

"Who the hell are you?" Shaundi asks. Wait, what?

"Huh? The Boss introduced us, or are you a different person? I'm not very good with names."

"I've never seen you with the boss," Johnny Gat argues.

"And I've never seen you not dead," she shoots back.

Johnny and Shaundi exchange looks. Kinsie looks at me, and I shrug, shaking the aircar in the process.

Gat doesn't like that answer. "What the fuck is that supposed to-"

Suddenly, there's a shrill beeping sound. Kinsie is the first to voice the thought that I'm sure we're all having. "What's that beeping sound?"

Oh shit. "It's a missile-"

I don't get a chance to finish my sentence. A sudden impact rocks the aircar. At least, it felt like a moderate jolt to me. Kinsie's head slams into the dashboard with a sickening crack, leaving bloody marks on it. Johnny fares slightly better, his head not quite hitting the windshield. Shaundi gets bounced forward and then rapidly back.

This game sucks.

The slight humming of the aircar's engines rises in pitch, changes to an ominous grinding sound, then sputters and dies, leaving on the whoosh of airflow in its wake. There's a sickening feeling as the aircar begins to accelerate downward, now lacking the mass effect anti-grav magic necessary to keep it up.

I take that back. This game _really_ sucks.

"Aw shit," Johnny mutters from the front seat. What's Citadel gravity again? It's not -9.8m/s^2, but when you're in a falling aircar, it's hard to tell. I'll go with "too fast to be safe".

"Better hold on!" I shout unnecessarily loudly, grabbing hold of a conveniently placed overhead handle. It promptly snaps off. "Fuck!"

Somehow it manages to feel like minutes and seconds at the same time. I watch in horror as we descend toward a tall building. We barely clear the roof, and we don't clear the roof of the one behind it. There's another hard jolt as the aircar slams into the not-glass windows of the top story. Then another, harder one as we slam into the floor. The aircar begins to skid and just as I think we're going to come to a graceful stop slams hard into an interior wall.

I didn't feel anything. Well, no pain or signs of damage anyway, it felt like a roller coaster ride. Not that I've ever been, but what I would imagine a roller coaster ride to be.

"Everyone okay... fuck." Everyone is almost certainly not okay. Johnny is not in his seat, and there is a nice Johnny-sized hole in the windshield used to be, and also a lot of bits of flesh and bone and blood. The driver's side is a mess of gore and there is a jagged piece of metal through what used to be Kinsie's head. A wet gurgling sound comes from beside me.

Shaundi's in pretty bad shape. Okay, I'm a pretty bad judge of that, but I'd lean more toward "about to die" and less toward "needs a band-aid". There's blood all over her jacket and face. She coughs and more comes out of her mouth. Ew.

"Johnny..." Shaundi doesn't finish her sentence. One more bloody cough, more a wheeze really, her eyes glaze over and her head rolls to the side.

"Sorry," I whisper, feeling an empty feeling of... loss. Why? It's just a character from Saints Row. Brought to life, killed, mutated through story and console commands. Nothing but an abstraction, a figment of our imaginations. Just a fictional character.

The gore is still starting to make me sick. Two punches and what's left of the door is gone. I carefully climb out to survey the damage.

The entire floor is basically trashed. There's a path of debris and destruction, broken not-glass and bits of metal along the path of our crashing aircar. The aircar itself is a smoking ruin. Desks are overturned and smashed to bits, stationary scattered, and a potted plant pounded into its dirt in the corner.

And the bodies. Three of them were directly between the window and the wall. I can't even tell what species they were, but the gore is a mix of purple and red. One deep violet asari missing the entire half of her body, the remaining half still twitching. Two more lie on the floor behind desks, covered in blood and with expressions of agony etched into their faces. Another is impaled with a chunk of not-glass, her bloody fingers wrapped around it like she tried to remove the piece before expiring.

I hear a lone asari sobbing. She's kneeling next to another asari, blood soaking her gloved fingers as she desperately tries to stop the bleeding from one of her many wounds. "Dalia! Dalia! No, don't go, you can't do this to me..."

I need to clean this mess up.

_ (0)_

_ ()_

_ (this, now)_

Thank you. Now nobody will know. Let's get the hell out of here.

_ (0);_

_ ();_

_ (this, now);_

_ (UniverseHalo.*,1);_

_ ( .rifleAvenger,1);_

_ ( .thermalClip,ALL);_

_ (this,default);_

_home;_

I sit down and turn on the future-TV. It's the news, showing footage of the office we crashed into. I manage to watch for a minute or so before my brain goes from numb to overdrive.

I just killed a bunch of people. Not characters. People.

Holy fuck.

I don't make it to the toilet.


	5. responsibility

/*  
I've decided to reply to reviews in the header for this story, which is a change for me as I previously have accomplished this via PM. However given the nature of this story I feel an open dialogue would be superior to a bipartisan conversation.

Starspike7(3): Should I have a beta reader? Probably. I did for some of my other stories. But for this one, I just want to have fun with it. I'll write a chapter when I fell like, start to finish in one session, and publish as soon as it's finished. Understand that this story is very much a boredom-relieving side project, unlike some of my past stories.

XRaiderV1(1): Actually, what the cose is supposed to look like is Java or C# with a bit of C, a bit of cmd and a lot of console commands mixed in. What you're seeing is random gibberish that FFn's overzealous URL censor has not deleted.

Michae1ange1o(4): Yes.

MarxistFIN(4): Not going to lie, your fic was a major inspiration for this one. I've asked myself what I'd do in an SI before and the answer was always "curl up in a ball and cry". Now what if I had unlimited powers? I've never actually read a fic like that before, and I didn't think it could work until I read yours. Expect borrowed ideas. I won't mind if you reciprocate.

Kaioo(1): No, the code block originally read something like  
_associated changes (optional):  
-CommanderShepard romanticDisposition : Character  
...76 others_  
but the censor nuked the important bits. 76 changes are to various stats, characters, objects and things. These are only major changes, mind you, very minor changes are done by extension and aren't counted. In any case, only the mandatory, not the optional, changes were carried out.

Archer83(4): Anti-hero and I'm not saying any more than that.

This chapter is very much stream-of-consciousness. It may be confusing and rambling, but it's supposed to be. I altered the code format to hopefully not get hacked up by FFn's censor. It's supposed to be based on Java or C#, very object-oriented, but there are some elements that FFn really doesn't like and all you get is a few brackets and args. The modified code is more like C or even BASIC with cmd or console commands mixed in and should get past easier. There's also been a minor revision to the chapter heading format.  
*/

chapters[5] **responsibility**

After the vomiting came the dry heaving. It's like your body keeps trying to puke, but it's out of things to throw up. I've never done it before, and I don't want to do it again. It's actually painful.

After the dry heaving came the sobbing. I collapse into a perfect ball on the floor, mostly avoiding the pile of vomit on the floor. I don't know how long I spend doing that, but my unbalanced mind races through all kinds of horrible thoughts.

I just killed a bunch of people. Not for king and country, not for survival, not for vengeance or profit or rage. I just gunned down cops ands civilians in cold blood because I was bored.

Cops that were probably looking forward to an uneventful day consisting of issuing traffic tickets, filling out virtual paperwork, and eating donuts. Loners, lovers and families just going about their daily business when some psycho starts shooting. Office staff that weren't expecting suddenly an aircar.

Shaundi died in my arms, minutes after coming into being. Blood everywhere, desperate look on her eyes, begging for... Johnny Gat? Who was splattered all over the floor ten metres away. And the asari with blood all over her hands, desperately and futileily trying to save her sister.

No, I'm being stupid. Those are characters, fictional characters. They aren't real. They don't have souls. What I did was no worse than locking a bunch of Sims in a 3x3 room and setting it on fire.

I'm lying and I know it. I don't know if this is really real, or how one can define reality, or whether it matters, and it felt real and not real at the same time. But I regret it, and I feel. The look in their eyes as they died, the screams of agony, of desperation. If it's not real then it's a good enough fake for it to matter.

This isn't a game anymore. These are real people. Or are they? I have incredible universe-shattering abilities, the ability to create and destroy at will. This is a universe that existed as fiction. Are these people real, with living souls, or are they just constructs, a facade of reality. Was that ever the case? Does it matter? Do they have hopes and dreams and feelings and emotions?

When I spawn someone in, am I forcibly pulling them out of their home universe and slamming them in? Am I creating a copy? Can you copy a soul? Is there such a thing as a soul? Is a functional soul morally the same as a metaphysical one? When they die, what happens? When I despawn them, what happens? Are they just soulless husks? Shaundi didn't look like a soulless husk, didn't feel like a soulless husk when she died.

What if I change something and it prevents someone from being born? Is that the same as murder? Can I change destiny when I know that some will inevitably lose even though I'm overall making it better?

Morality isn't fixed. That's something I figured out long ago. Morality is absolutely relative. A villain is a hero by another name. We all do the wrong things for all the right reasons. But the consequences are minor for most of us... does having power over everyone else give you the right to do whatever the fuck you want or does it demand stronger morals?

Fuck them. I know what the answer would be if I was sane, and I know what the answer would be if I was on the other side. Fuck other people.

Who am I kidding?

I can undo this. I'm going to undo this. I'm not going to do it again. I'm going to return myself to baseline, psychologically, and I'm not going to do this again. I'm going to use my powers for good, or what I deem to be good, or something like that, and not just for fucking around. I'm going to try to do the right thing, even though I know I'm going to fail.

Like I failed Before?

But if you can do it with no consequences, why not? Just do it and undo it.

What does that do to people? To the galaxy? Is the undo absolute and infalliable? Does it leave traces? Does it merely instance the universe and copy everything, leaving a shattered world behind? Is death permanent? Is it still wrong. Does it make a difference? Does it matter?

So many questions. I don't think I could handle doing that again.

I need a drink. But I need to undo the damage I've already caused first. Then I can move on. Try to forget... but not forget. If I forget I'll do it again. Fuck it all up. I just need to fix this and fix myself and move on.

_clearinventory;  
activator alterStats(revert getTime(now) - getTime(presidumMassacre));  
event revert(presidiumMassacre);_


	6. modeling

/Don't really have much to comment on, too tired. Enjoy!

Chapters[6] **modeling**

After the "getting over yourself" stage comes the "what do I do next" stage. First, how much time do I have?

_ DeltaDateAndEvent(getObjectFromDescription("Eden Prime Attack 2183"));  
5__d__23__h__1__m3__3__s_

That gives me a school week, or a week minus two days, or five days, or- you get the idea. That's quite a bit of time all things considered. I know I want to do good things for the galaxy, but what?

There's an ironic paradox- all the power in over the universe and no idea what to do with it.

I decide it's best if I break up my options in an organized manner, or attempt to anyway.

The first option is the classic self-insert. Join Shepard's crew, follow them around the galaxy and step through The Stations Of The Canon, maybe slightly influencing events as it happens. Except I'm pretty sure that I'll fuck that up somehow, and even if not deliberately probably drastically change events. The universe is not butterfly proof. I think.

The second option is quite similar to the first, but slightly different. Join Shepard's crew and actively try to make things better. That guy who kind of worked with Cerberus from that story with Q in it did this. Only you might fuck things up horribly, possibly killing more people, maybe even the saviour of the galaxy. With that being said, I think I'm the first with these abilities to try that.

The third option is to work behind the scenes, gently nudging Shepard in the right direction, giving some quiet help from the shadows. Maybe revealing myself later, when the time is right. Of course, one might screw that up too, revealing too soon, too late, or ending up doing nothing, or a clusterfuck of massive proportions.

The fourth option is to go get fucking rich, party hard, get laid, and just live it out awesomely. It might be some of the self-enhancements I did, but for some reason this just doesn't appeal to me like it should.

Maybe I'm selfish, but I want to meet Shepard in the flesh... I said _meet_, not _fuck_. So option three is out. I don't think I could stand just watching everything play out as it's supposed to, I mean, I'd go nuts not doing anything, feeling like I'm not doing anything anyway. So option one is out.

That leaves option two. So logical and rational.

So I need to meet Shepard, and I need to get on her crew. I have a few chances to do that. All of them I've seen in other self-inserts.

The first is to be a survivor on Eden Prime. Usually this one doesn't happen by choice. The problem here is that I'm exactly that- a survivor. Shepard gets the evidence, puts me in a safe place, and leaves. I could prevent that from happening, but it's still sub-optimal.

I could assist with the investigation. Most people just save Tali- not like she needed saving anyway. I could alternatively save Michel, or hang out on the Presidium with a briefcase full of evidence or something Different like that.

I could meet her on Noveria, or Feros, or Virmire, but any of those places bring problems of their own, and how am I supposed to know when she's there? I mean, I can know when Shepard will be there, but I'm not supposed to.

Or I could just appear randomly aboard the Normandy. But that won't work very well.

I need a few things in order. I need a persona- displaced nerd isn't going to fly. I need Shepard to take me along, preferably willingly.

Something like ex-merc or privateer would work. Badass enough to handle himself in combat, decent knowledge of the galaxy, and got something she wants. Perfect.

Except I look too young, I'd screw up and blow the cover story somewhere along the line, and I don't even have any idea what a merc does in this galaxy. Granted, I can fix all this by Hacking The Universe, but... dead Shaundi and all that.

I could claim that I'm some kind of information broker or somesuch. Except I don't really have that much information, though I can get a lot, and I'd be useless on the ground and Shepard knows this. That's okay, I'm content to stay on the ship, but would she even let me aboard?

This is without even considering other variables, like Anderson or Udina. Damn, there's just no easy answer.

Being alone really sucks. I work a lot better when I can bounce ideas off someone. Bounce off someone... wait, wasn't Tali already on the Citadel before Eden Prime?

_ GetLocation("TaliZorah",String);  
Veil$40A8D47_

Fuck. So much for that plan. Come to think of it, I seem to recall Tali's evidence mentioning the attack. How long did it take the Normandy to get to the Citadel after Eden Prime, anyway?

Eden Prime. The attack is still a school week or 1.2 college weeks away. Once Saren comes, he's going to decimate the colony. Kill most of the garrison, most of the civilians, burn humanity's shining jewel to the ground. That's horrible, but nobody could do anything to stop it. The attack came out of nowhere. Except I know it's coming.

I could just magick away the attack, and in doing so completely shatter what would be the plot of the first game. I could warn the Alliance, but would they believe me? And what happens if Saren calls off the attack? What if it's something small, like Shepard going in front instead of Jenkins?

I can save the colony.

But I might take the galaxy out with it.

Except I can save that too.

And possibly fuck up everything in the process.

And fix that too.

And end up with a neverending circle of patch over patch.

I don't want that to happen. Goddamn it, I need ideas!

I can't do nothing, that's for sure. But I have to be very careful or I'll end up with the break-fix loop above. I need a plan, but none is coming to me.

I slam my fist down on my desk, and the computer shifts a few inches. That's probably not good for it.

Okay, let's think this through logically. What's the goal? Save the colonists. I might not be able to save all of them, but I'm going to try. The other goal is, of course, not to alter the flow of events too badly, but I'm just going to put that aside for the moment. That can be fixed.

Options. Easiest option is to alert the Alliance. But I'm going to need to appear reliable, like a reputable source, or else they'll just ignore me. If they don't question me and investigate. Maybe there's a way to hack that.

Huh. No magical hints. Which means it'll probably take a script a few pages long, and I don't really want to to write a script that long. Even when the galaxy is at stake I can't move my lazy ass.

So that's out. I could intervene indirectly, maybe spawn in a few 304s and watch the fireworks. But that brings in way more problems than it solves.

I could intervene in a direct-but-not-direct way. Maybe put up a shield over the colony or make everyone super tough. But again, problems.

So that leaves direct intervention as the last option after my not-so-logical decision process. I need to protect the colony, but allow Saren to use the beacon, and make sure the Normandy arrives and Shepard uses the beacon.

It occurs to me that I could just despawn Saren right then and there, but I immediately dismiss the thought.

Eden Prime has the 212th stationed on the colony, and maybe a small colonial militia as well. I need them armed and ready to fight. They're going to be massively outnumbered and outgunned, so I need to give them an advantage, too. Maybe some new armor, new guns, and some heavy firepower.

We need to get the colonists to safety, to a defensible, sheltered position. I don't know of any on the planet, but I know I can find one. I rally the troops with a legit sounding warning, get everyone to safety, hold out until Shepard arrives.

Wait, how big is Eden Prime?

_ GetPopulation("EdenPrime");  
3710892_

Are you fucking shitting me? It didn't look anywhere close to that big in-game. That throws that plan out the window.

Wait. It didn't look anywhere close to that in-game. That could be rationalized as engine limitations, but a planet is a big place. Saren was looking for the beacon specifically. Which means that he's going to be invading a very small part of the planet. Small enough that we can evacuate and hold him off there. He's going to focus on the beacon, so we just have to contain and distract his forces until everything settles.

But how am I going to supply the 212 with extra firepower and make them believe my story? I've run into the same problem I had with my other plans- credibility. Sure I can get around it, but then I end up with even more problems!

I feel smart that I realize that this early in the game, but stupid that I'm letting it get in my way. I'm a physical god, damn it!

I bring up the news, looking for inspiration. Quickly I skim through the headlines, not bothering to actually read any of the articles.

_Matriarch Alantha Dead At 988_

_Francis Kitt Discusses Shakespeare Project_

_Pushing Boundaries: What Pelya's Law Means_

_Insane Woman Awakens in C-Sec Morgue_

_Pirate Raid May Have Stolen Top-Secret Cargo_

_HBG Executive Assures Galaxy "We're not Cerberus"_

_New Study Shows Cancer Risk Higher in E0 Exposed Humans_

Wait, back up a bit.

_HBG Executive Assures Galaxy "We're not Cerberus"_

That's it. I know exactly how I'm going to do this.

_Corporation aegis = new Corporation("Aegis Foundation");_


	7. plan

/*  
There will be action coming up in the next chapter, I promise! I know that this story has been slow to start but I'm going to speed it up very soon.  
*/

Chapters[7] **plan**

The plan is simple. I'm a representative from a defence contractor. I've learned of an incoming pirate attack on Eden Prime from a source I can't divulge for reasons of corporate security. I've got some weapons systems that I was going to sell but I'm willing to take the opportunity to test them out instead.

It's a fucking horrible plan. It's complex, relies on a lot of factors I can't control for, and might not even give me the outcome I'm looking for. I'll be the first to admit it's a shitty plan, and that it's the best I could come up with really says something about my planning ability. Spawning a couple 304s in orbit is getting more and more attractive every moment.

But at least I can tilt the odds in my favour. Come on cluless, I need hints!

_setType(enum corporationType)  
setDescription(String description)  
extrapolate()_

Okay, I can make my corporation look real. That's always useful. I need a good timeline.

_setType(FakeCorporation);  
setDescription("Safeguarding the galaxy without sacrificing morality."); ;;god that's fucking horrible  
extrapolate();  
setOccupation(aegis,ceo);_

Now I have a legit corporation. The next step is what wares I need to hawk. I can't give them stuff that's too nice, or it'll seriously fuck up the technological development of the galaxy, but it has to be good enough to fend of Saren's attack. But not good enough to defeat him entirely. And the little voice in the back of my head is saying that inherited classes are going to come up.

First up, armor. I already designed some very effective systems for my Stargate fanfic, so I might as well recycle them.

_import sgd;_

I want to give them Aegis suits, maybe the Mark III or the Mark V. No, definitely not the Mark V, that one has jump jets and I don't want to drop those on them yet. Even the Mark III is a little advanced, with its stealth systems and all, although stealth is actually a thing here. Either way, I'm going to need to scrub all records of the SGC from the suits, modify the communications systems to sync with Alliance protocols, modify the control scheme to be familiar to the Alliance soldiers, and replace the shields with normal barriers.

How the fuck do I do that? If these were nice direct reality altering powers, that would be easy. But with reality programming, I'm going to need all the inexplicable hints I can get.

_class aegis3mod extends aegis3(Selector sgd)_

replace () aegis(Selector Corporation);  
replace () aegis(Selector Corporation);  
replace appearanceLogos aegis(Selector Corporation);  
replace () methodLookup("Alliance armor controls") . .controlsch();  
replace () methodLookup("Alliance comm protocols") . ();  
}

I think I need to compile the class before it'll work.

_compile aegis3mod;  
preparing for compile:  
reading superclass information...  
retrieving dependencies...  
WARNING: multiple source dependencies may cause conflicts  
setting up build environment...  
WARNING: use of the default package is discouraged  
building class:  
integrating dependencies...  
WARNING: element sg_naq undefined for universe UniverseMassEffect  
WARNING: element sg_trin undefined for universe UniverseMassEffect  
INFO: building with libsgmaterials from package .Stargate  
INFO: interface sgccompute-mecomputecom undefined, creating temporary interface  
INFO: interface sgccompute-mecomputehid undefined, creating temporary interface  
INFO: interface sgshield-localphys undefined, creating temporary interface  
INFO: interface sgdamp-localphys undefined, creating temporary interface  
INFO: interface sgenergy-localphys undefined, creating temporary interface  
extrapolating additional information...  
INFO: expected 6E27 atoms, got 6E27 atoms  
building class into usable object...  
WARNING: origin not local to world, may cause undefined or out-of-bounds behavior  
class built with 0 errors _

Wow. That was long. Is there a silent option? What about a preview?

_preview(aegis3mod);_

A viewer showing the armor appears in the same space in my mind the code does. Aegis Foundation insignia, huh, I love the really generic auto-generated logo. It's so realistic and detailed...

Weapons next. I think I can just give them some from Halogen, so I can deal with that later.

Heavy weapons... I don't know the first thing about designing gunships or tanks or such. So I can just bring in some repainted Makos and generic gunships. I've got some designs in my head, but they'd probably ask too many questions about the puddle-jumper-with-gatling-gun.

It's probably best if I don't just appear on the planet, so I'm going to get a ride. Probably easier to just charter one, then I don't have to worry about the consequences of spawning stuff so much. Then again, I would love a cool ship.

No.

_giveCredentials(aegisCredentials);  
giveCredentials(aegisExpenseAccount);_

I could probably go out and find a place to charter a ship, but why go out and meet people when you could just sit in your apartment and do it over the internet! I mean extranet!

There's probably something wrong with me.

I open up the extranet browser. In the future, people don't believe in URLs or IP addresses. Everything is by keyword. You just type in a keyword, and that's sent to a local server which searches its own database and returns cached results. Then that request is forwarded to servers further away, which search their own database, return results and forward the request again. The response from the local server- for me, the one down the street, is nearly instant, and the next few (around the Citadel) pretty fast as well. Once you get further than that you start seeing serious latencies. So the result page loads instantly, but keeps loading. That's weird and I miss Google.

By the way, I made all that up. I figure it's a good guess but I'm too lazy to look up how it actually works.

I search "charter flights to eden prime". Amazingly, the system does a pretty good job of interpreting my vague wording. The first three results are sponsored advertisements. The next two are local charter listings and the six after that are all websites of companies that offer charter flights.

I search the local charter listings first. No good, all the companies need at least 24 hours notice and the fastest advertised travel time is four days, plus a few hours at each end for loading and unloading. If I want to bring lots of big crates, then I'm looking at an even slower ship. Or paying way more, like not a little more, but way the hell more.

I try several of the company websites, with the same results. Finally, I come to the last one, Star Industries. I have an urge to add a k to the end of the first word of that name.

Hey, they have a live agent! I try it. The conversation goes something like this:

_Silia: Welcome to the Star Industries live agent help support line! How may We help you today?  
adminstrator s7-3700: need a charter flight  
Silia: Established in !dateformaterror, Star Industries is the Citadel's leading provider of chartered starships.|  
adminstrator s7-3700: need to get to Eden Prime 4 days or faster, need to book now, and need to carry heavy cargo  
Silia: Star Industries offers a variety of charter options, including flicker ships, fast cargo carriers, and executive transports.  
adminstrator s7-3700: are you even an actual live agent?  
Silia: Silia by Ertec is an advanced virtual intelligence system designed specifically for customer service.  
adminstrator s7-3700: Well, that's really helpful /sarcasm  
adminstrator s7-3700: You should add a k to the end of Star in your company's name, just trust me on that one.  
adminstrator s7-3700: also you're a fucking useless bot, bye_

Well, fuck. Back to Plan A. Which is to magically teleport.

_teleport(EdenPrime,TPFLAG_NOTELEFRAG);_

There's a slight feeling of vertigo and disorientation, then my surroundings change to a futuristic city and I suddenly find myself falling. I probably only fall a few inches before something soft breaks my fall, and we both tumble to the ground.

"Fuck!"


	8. inbound

Apologies for the long, long, long delay. I've been very busy with some other projects, mostly to do with the holiday season. This chapter I had to force together and it shows I think. Also, I promise there will be some action in the next chapter. I know it's been a bit of a slog but things should finally start coming together.

* * *

chapters[8] **inbound**

I quickly and awkwardly scramble to my feet, and the person I landed on is already staring at me.

Tall (maybe I'm just short in the future) athletic woman, relatively small breasts but nice hips. Military fatigues. Tan or light brown skin colour. Round face. Disapproving look in her brown eyes. Holy shit, it's Ashley Williams!

I suppress the urge to do a fangirlish squee. It's harder than you might think, and it leaks out as possibly the most awkward coughing fit ever.

"Hey, what the hell?"

Hello there Kimberly Brooks. Or, more accurately, person who was played by Kimberly Brooks and sounds almost exactly like her. But looks nothing like her based on the pictures I've seen.

Did you know that Kimberly Brooks played Daisy Fitzroy in Bioshock Infinite? It's the only game I know of with both Laura Bailey and Jennifer Hale in it, but you can barely tell because of the accents.

Yes, I actually go on wild tangents like that all the time. Meanwhile, Ashley Williams is staring at me like I'm crazy. Which is probable.

"Are you just going to stand there and stare like an idiot?"

I look around, both because yes I am staring and I need a plausible excuse for landing on top of her. Running into someone is one thing, landing on top of them is quite another.

We're standing in what is I guess the outskirts of the colony. It looks kind of like what we saw in the game. Pretty flat, dirt ground. We're surrounded by prefab units in various states of repair arranged in a roughly gridlike pattern. It's definitely more dense than what we saw in-game, a different area I guess, but the visual style (if you can call it that) is the same. We're on the edge of the 'street', near one of the prefabs.

"Uh, sorry about that," I stutter. "I didn't meant to run into you like that."

"Run into me?" she says, arching an eyebrow. "You _landed on top of me_! How does that even happen?"

"Bad geometry?" I offer. This is not going to work. I need some help.

_set charisma 200;_

I think I can sell it now.

"Look, this is awkward and I apologize but there's really no point dwelling. You're with the Alliance, correct?"

"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, 212th." She crosses her arms as I suppress another squee. "Who are you?"

That's a good question. Do I even have a name in this universe? Better set one, for now at least.

_setID(string first, string[] middle, string last)_

Huh, should probably stick with my actual first name, just to avoid potential self-confusion. I'll drop the middle name completely- they were on their way out Before and they're probably almost gone now, and change my last name.

_setID("Chris",null,"Miller");_

_reconcile -q -c;_

_reconciling changes:_

_-setID("Chris",null,"Miller")_

_successful : 19 changes made_

Wow, _Miller_. How very creative. You have the ability to warp reality and the best name you could come up with was _Miller_. Note to self: Find something more interesting later.

"I'm Chris Miller, CEO of the Aegis Foundation. We're a small startup focused on providing advanced defence solutions. I was actually on my way here to demonstrate some technologies when a situation came up."

It briefly occurs to me that Christopher Miller probably would have sounded better than Chris Miller. Oh well, Chris is legally my name now, at least until I change it. Besides, do people even use long names in the future?

That got her interested, at least. Amazing how smooth I can be with my charisma stat jacked way the hell up. I'm still nervous as hell, but it's not in the way now. "How do I know you're legit and not just some crazy guy off the street?"

_set active ashley;_

_giveItem(aegisCEOBusinessCard,1);_

_release active;_

A business card appears in her hand and she's taken aback. "What the hell?"

"One of the many technologies we've been working on. There's more I can show you." She starts walking away, and I hurry to keep up.

"You said a situation came up. Get to the point." The fact that this is the closest I've been to having a girlfriend is pretty sad. Except she's at least ten years older than me so it's kind of a bit creepy. Stop thinking about her like that. No, really, stop. She might notice.

Then again, knowing me, probably not.

"I was on my way here when we picked up a vessel on our long-range scanners. Checked it against the database, and, well, it's geth. And it's coming here."

"Hold on a minute. You said you picked a geth ship up on long-range scanners, but they must have been moving faster than light. If you saw them from here, wouldn't they already be here?"

"With conventional slower-than-light scanners, yes. With our new subspace arrays, we can pick them up already." Why didn't I just say I didn't see them from here, I picked them up when they were stopped for gas a few systems over?

"There are so many things wrong with that. Relativity, causality, space-time. Did you fail high school physics?"

"Reducing the mass of a ship to accelerate it past the lightspeed barrier was once considered impossible."

"I'm not convinced. The geth haven't been seen outside the Veil in hundreds of years."

"Look, if you can take me to your base I can show you and your commanding officer."

"I can't just bring some president of a two-bit company with a few magic tricks on base."

"And if the geth drop in and start killing everyone because you weren't prepared?"

She sighs and concedes, "You better be legit. If you aren't, I will personally fuck you up."

"I'm not lying." Also, I wouldn't mind that.

I'm gonna need a crate full of stuff ready when I get there. Better do that now, while we're walking. I'll just follow her and hopefully not walk into a post.

_Container shipment = new Container(StandardShippingCrate);_

_set active shipment;_

_addm(aegis3mod,12);_

_add(QuickBuild("man-portable long-range subspace scanner with omni-tool interface"));_

_addm(UniverseHalogenWeaponS97,12);_

_addm(UniverseHalogenAmmoslugCase,6);_

_release active;_

Done. I can just drop the sucker in and explain it away as one of our advanced techs.

It occurs to me that I'm probably mucking up everything already with all the advanced technology, but when you have it at your fingertips it's so hard to resist. Because why not?

It's not far to the Alliance base, if you can call it that. Outpost would be charitable. It's just a few prefab buildings, a chain-link fence, a single guard post and a sign that declared it as _Fort Kynareth, home of the 212th Screaming __Weasels_ (maybe a joke?). Then again, maybe I just have ridiculous preconceived notions of what a military base should be.

"Huh, that's smaller than I expected," I note under my breath.

"It's a fob, you dumb civvie." I actually know what she meant by that.

"Hey boomstick, who's the civvie?" The guard shouted from inside his post. I didn't get a good look at him, because Ash quickly moves between us.

"Really, Mike?" she asked.

He raised his hands into the air. "I don't come up with the names, just use 'em. Besides, you know I love ya."

"In your dreams."

His tone turned serious. "But seriously, who's the civvie? You know I can't just let anyone in off the street."

I step in, introducing myself and handing him a business card.

"I don't know, we didn't get so much as a call ahead."

"He says there are _geth_ coming to kill us." I can't see her roll her eyes, but I think she's doing it.

"And you actually believe that?" the guard- Mike- laughed.

"No, but do you want to be wrong?"

"Not really."

"Then let us through. Call it calling a favour."

"Fine, but if you're wrong, it's your cute little ass that's getting it."

"Go fuck yourself, Mike!" Ash shouts as we walk into the base.

"Uh, who was that guy?" I ask.

"Corporal Mike Bailey. Complete bag. Hits on girls, hits on guys, makes lots of inappropriate comments. But we keep him around because he can put a bullet between your eyes at a thousand metres."

Inside the base, there's a woman in PT gear running around, one guy cleaning a machine gun, two soldiers (marines?) in armour doing a patrol, and a lot of marines sitting around. What's odd to me is that almost half of them are female. And at least half of them are _hot_. Well, by my standards anyway.

Some of them turn to look at us as we pass. This reminds me more of Generation Kill by the minute. Except for the women.

"After you, _jefe_," Ash says, motioning to one of the prefabs. I briefly wonder how Hispanic Williams is, or if the word has simply entered the common vernacular by now. It might not even mean the same thing. It might even be an insult for all I know.

Future English is hard.

As the doors slides open and I step through I briefly wonder if I can hack in a backstory.

_addEvent(interp("Aegis Foundation call-ahead"));_

Piece of cake. And wow, that is some funky new commands. Also, a target object reference would have been handy earlier. Is there a tracer one too?

The inside of the prefab is covered in computer consoles connected by messy wiring. Dominating the chamber is a large computerized plotting table with a hologram above it. Several marines (should it be capitalized as Marines?) are stationed around the room. It smells of sweat and air conditioner and a faint whiff of strawberries. I may or may not have imagined the last one. Standing above the plotting table is the LT.

If Chief Williams is attractive, then Lieutenant Hart is gorgeous. She's slightly taller than the Chief, but slimmer too, though still of an athletic rather than model-like build. Pretty face, brilliant blue eyes and honey blond hair tied back in a loose ponytail. She's wearing the same fatigues but somehow they manage to look way better on her. Also it turns out she's the source of strawberry scent.

I will admit that I am an unapologetic amazon chaser. Never had any luck, though. Not much to choose from and none of them would even like me back anyway.

"What have you got for me, Chief?" Buthervoice! I was expecting Colonel Carter and she sounds more like Colonel Ferrando. I'm exaggerating, of course, but now that I have your attention... Imagine female Bishop from Rainbow Six Vegas 2 except less horrible and with more ground glass. That is a horribly obscure reference and I apologize.

"Chris Miller, CEO of the Aegis Foundation," Williams announces. Huh, she sounds much more sure now.

"You're early," Hart notes matter-of-factly, crossing her well-toned arms over her perfectly sized breasts. Must think of other thoughts before something bad happens! Margret Thatcher naked on a cold day! Margret Thatcher naked on a cold day! I think she noticed my staring because I see a slight smirk. Or maybe that's her breathing.

I gulp and return the matter-of-fact tone. "Something came up."

"What kind of something?"

"On my way here, my long-range scanners detected a vessel approaching at high speed."

"This is the same long-range scanner you were going to demo for us?" Williams asked.

I blink. Right, of course. I easily make up a slightly tall tale. "A bigger version, but the principle is the same."

"Okay, ships come here all the time. I take it from your tone that this wasn't just some merchantman?"

"Well, we compared it to what we had in our database," I lie smoothly, "and it appears to be of geth origin."

"Bullshit. The geth haven't been seen outside the veil in hundreds of years," one of the other marines in the prefab blurted out.

"The shipment. Did it make it?" Hart asked.

Yes, yes it did.

_shipment spawn(findEmptyCoords(here));_

_reconcile -q -c;_

_reconciling changes:_

_-shipment spawn(findEmptyCoords(here));_

_successful - 2 changes made_

"Should already be here."

Hart blinks a few times. "Of course. I don't suppose one of those scanners is in that crate?"

"I think so." I know so.

We head outside, and sure enough a large shipping crate is parked inside the compound. Uh, how do you open these? Nevermind, it has a computer console thing. It reads my thumbprint and the doors pop open.

Inside are several plastic boxes with the Aegis Foundation logo on them. Let's see, the stack of narrow ones probably contain guns, the big tall ones are armour, and the oddly shaped one that there's only one of must be the scanner. I grab it and head back outside.

"That's it?" Williams asks.

"Cramming ridiculously advanced technology into ridiculously small spaces is one of our many specialties," I quip. Why am I so comfortable here? Oh right, because I mindhacked myself. There's a new word. Write that down somewhere.

I figured the box would be held shut with more computerized latches, but no, it's just a box, and it's heat-sealed shut. I hand it to Williams. "I, uh, kind of forgot my knife."

"You don't need a knife," she berates, and opens the package. Squeeze the side a little, push on that corner and the end pops off. "How do you not know how to open your own packaging?"

"Usually I put the product _in_ the box." I take the now-open box from her and pull out the contents. Which is a small metal equipment box, an unidentifiable thingy and a long thin cable inside a foam container. Judging by the flexiness, I'd say it's EPP, or the futuristic equivalent thereof. I take a bite. It doesn't taste like much of anything. I spit it out.

"Did you just bite the packaging?"

"No?" That didn't come out right. I hurriedly depackage everything like a Winrar. Okay, the unidentified thing is like a fold-out satellite dish. And this connects here and, okay, I guess I can sync it to my omni-tool, aha!

"This isn't the first time you've done this, is it?" Hart asks. It probably took me five minutes just to get the damn thing together.

"Actually, uh, this is our first prototype," I lie. That would make sense, right? "Still working out the-"

"Holy shit, they're coming in right on top of us!"

I look at the hologram on my wrist. The big ball is Eden Prime, the red wedges are the bad guys I guess, and I don't have a good sense of scale but they look pretty close. I tap both and get a meaningless number in return.

"You sure this thing works?" Williams questions.

"I'm positive."

"How long do we have?" That was Heart. I mean Hart.

I fiddle with the virtual buttons some more. Menu, show measurement, ETA. Mechanically I read the readout. "At the current rate of advance, just over.. just over an hour?"

That can't be right.

_DeltaDateAndEvent(getCurrentDate(),getObjectFromDescription("Eden Prime Attack 2183"));_

_1__h__1__m__12__s_

What? I thought I had more time! Unless, of course, my presence pushed it up, which is possible. Even probable. By attempting to alter the flow of events I inadvertently altered the flow of events. Wait, that doesn't make any sense. You know what I mean.

Looks like my nonexistant plan just got blown to hell.


	9. setup

I lied. This is more buildup. It's kind of weak, and I will admit I did get lazy. But next chapter the fun will start. I know, I've been saying that for half the story now...

* * *

Chapters[9] **Setup**

"Not a glitch?" Lieutenant Hart asks, standing up and heading back toward the command building.

"Within reasonable doubt, not a glitch."

"It's not some kind of marketing stunt?" Williams asks me, more cynical.

"I may be crazy and stupid, but I'm not that crazy and stupid," I reply with more than a bit of snark.

"Get me a line to command," Hart orders as she reenters the command prefab. "Send this message. Geth attack inbound, detected via experimental FTL system provided by Aegis Foundation. Estimated time to arrival sixty minutes. Recommend immediate scramble."

"Will they believe us?" Williams asks.

"They better believe us," Hart replies. "Whether or not they do, _we're_ mobilizing."

I'm actually really fucking confused about ranks now. If I remember correctly, the Systems Alliance doesn't have a separate branch for Marines. They're attached to the Navy- I think. Hart is a Lieutenant- pronounced the American way. But is she equivalent in rank to a Marines Lieutenant or a Navy Lieutenant. If she's the former, she's probably no more than platoon leader. If it's the latter, then she might be the battalion or divisional commander. I probably mixed up the units, but you get the idea.

"How long until you're, uh, reinforced?" I ask.

"If you mean locally, never. The rest of the colonial garrison is going to be too busy defending the cities to help us out here. There's a unit of colonial militia out here but we'd be lucky if they got out of bed before the attack hits. If you mean from the Alliance, too late."

"What do you mean by too late?" Actually, I'm pretty sure I know the answer.

"The geth are machines. They're not motivated by fear. They don't care that we're going to counterattack later, they want the colony now. Our defences are primarily based around the fear of a brutal counterattack. Which means that we're sitting swans against the geth."

I know linguistic drift is a thing, but that blunt metaphors trauma still made me flinch.

"Where exactly is your unit heading?"

"An archaeological dig a few kilometres south of here," Hart says curtly. She turns to the guy on the console. "I'm gearing up. Let me know if anything happens."

"But why would the geth want this colony?" I ask, following the two women out of the prefab. Damn, they move fast.

After a pause I answer my own question. "The digsite."

"What about it?" Williams asks. Oh Ash, you fucking suck at hiding things.

"The beacon."

She give me this look. "You shouldn't know about it. Technically, we shouldn't know about it. How could _they_ know about it?"

Chief has a point. Actually, how _did_ Saren know that they'd found the beacon on Eden Prime. Was it already published in some kind of space journal? I thought it was top secret.

I answer my own question again. "It's a _beacon_. Maybe it acts like one."

"The eggheads said they didn't detect any activity,"

"It's poorly-understood ancient tech. Maybe they missed something."

"Fucking scientists," Williams mutters under her breath. I return The Look. Poorly. She apologizes anyway. "Sorry."

"Engineer, not scientist." Well, it's still a lie but it's less of a lie. Before, I was considering dumping engineering for IT. I'm not smart enough or nonlazy enough to be an engineer. I don't know about the job, but I don't think I can make it through the education. "Well, mostly."

"What do you mean mostly?"

"I don't do most of it anymore." Vague is good.

Hart pauses in front of the container, and she asks me directly, "What exactly have you got in there?"

"A dozen suits of armour, a dozen assault rifles. All cutting-edge."

"How cutting-edge?" Hart asks.

"What armour are you using right now?"

"Sirta Phoenix." Ah, the bright bubblegum pink. How could you forget that?

"This stuff's at least an order of magnitude better. It's fully powered, fully sealed, the armour itself is

significantly stronger and it's powered. The shields are also a new type that are resistant to energy weapons." Man, I am just making this shit up as I go along. I hope that I'm reasonably accurate and I hope I sound convincing. With my track record, both points are doubtful.

"And the guns?"

"Accurate and powerful, but we haven't tested those much." Wow, I'm getting good at making shit up as I go along. "They need ammo, too. Don't worry, I won't charge you if you toss them away in the middle of combat."

"Can we trust this?" Williams asks.

"You want an advantage, you've got it." I cross my arms and try to look badass. I think I just came across as a scumbag.

She grabs one of the armour cases, and though she seems to lift it fine (I thought the stuff weighed a few hundred pounds?) I can tell the weight surprised her. "What the fuck is this made of?"

"Alloys you've probably never heard of." Actually, mostly carbon composite (nanotubes, maybe) and naquadah-carbon-trinium.

"Anything heavier?" Hart asks, taking one for herself and motioning some marines to grab the rest. She begins heading toward another building.

"It's already pretty heavy."

"I meant weapons. What do you have for heavy weapons?" Oh, right, that.

"Some drones, maybe a gunship." I am (not literally) pulling this out of my ass. "I didn't exactly have time to take inventory."

"This armour adjusts, right?" Hart asks, changing subjects.

"Yes." Hopefully.

"Good." She taps her ear. "Innes, Ramirez, Garcia, Mann, Satowa, Moshe, McIntosh, Borosova, Yerchenko, Han, meet at the armory. I've got a surprise for you."

We enter a prefab with a lot of guns, some security gates and a lady with a ponytail and a rifle casually leaning against the wall. I follow Hart as she makes a right into a room with a lot of lockers. A locker room, I guess. They drop the cases on the ground and open them.

"So, how do you put it on?"

That's actually a very good question which I shall have to dodge. "It shouldn't be too different from what you're used to." If I remember my own writing correctly, it takes two people, so this should be fun.

Then they start stripping. I avert my eyes as they suddenly start pulling clothes off. Man, Hart is _hot_. No. She's probably old enough to be your mother.

"What, never seen a female body before?" Williams teases.

Actually, the answer is no. I mean, technically, yes, since I was born to a human mother, but in the normal sense, no.

"You have somewhere safe to go?" Hart asks. I'm still looking at the wall.

"I've got a ship."

"You won't get off the planet in time."

"I don't intend to."

"What?"

"Are you still naked or can I look now?"

"We're done." I look. Wow.

"I said I might have some more equipment. I'm going to try to get it working and get it here."

"With the geth crawling around?"

"The geth aren't something I have to worry about."

I feel like such a badass. I feel like such a dirty Stu.

Even with the hax I still don't know what to say here. I utter, "Good luck."

"You too." Hart grasps my hand with her armoured one. I feel the bones move around in her crushing grip. There are actuators in those gloves, you know!

"He's fucking crazy," I hear as I leave the building.

I need a plausible place to park a jumper. Also a copilot, probably. Have I already imported Stargate?

_import stargate;_

Right, where can I park the jumper? I wave at the guard as I leave the base. He gives me the finger. Behind him, the base is stepping up in a flurry of activity. I think I mixed metaphors there.

There's a little hill that would hide a jumper behind it. I pull out my toolgun, which is still on me somehow. I think there's some weird shit going on with my inventory but I'm not going to test it right now. Do I look like rationalist!Harry to you?

_ToolGun setSpawnObject PuddleJumper;_

I aim and fire and a puddle jumper appears. For those of you who have never watched Stargate, or stopped watching before season 8 of SG-1 or the beginning of Atlantis, a puddle jumper is a small ship that's very tough, has okay weapons, cloaks, does not go FTL, and fits through a Stargate.

The ramp is down, so I casually stroll inside and take a seat where the pilot would sit. I touch the panel. It's supposed to activate. Nothing happens. Ah, right.

_give ATA;_

As expected, everything lights up and comes online. I need a Staples button. That was easy. And then I remember something very important.

The Eden Prime attack was supposed to happen a week from now. That date coincides with the first mission of the Normandy. Shepard isn't going to here for another week. I think I just accidentally the galaxy.

Nah, it's okay. Hopefully they'll come early because of the distress call. If not, I'll just teleport them or something.

_normandy setgoal EdenPrime _

I wonder if that will actually work.

But what about the beacon? Only because of very specific events did Shepard get the Prothean junk downloaded into her brain. If the conditions aren't perfectly right then someone else might download it or nobody at all. Which means we have no catalyst (lower case) and no chase. Which means that Saren is the only one with the knowledge and Saren wins. Unless, of course, Saren never uses the beacon, in which case the whole plot of Mass Effect 1 basically just got flushed down the toilet.

In the wise words of Jack O'Neill, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. But I think it's going to involve some spaghetti code.

With my thoughts, I cloak the Jumper and take off. It's very easy and natural, even though I've never done it before. I guess setting that flag gave me the good ATA gene like O'Neill and Sheppard (spell it right, people) have, not the next to useless Beckett ATA gene.

I should have brought a deck of cards. I do have my phone still (I know, I know), but I don't think I could kill an hour with Doom or Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja.

I bring up my omni-tool and connect to the extranet. Once that comes up, I start searching for the available games. Lots of Facebook social games, a ton of casual games, and few real games. Top-down shooters seem to be the thing, although I am seeing tower defence and (strange) puzzle games too. No Minecraft. It kind of bothers me for a bit that the selection of games almost exactly mirrors what we had Before.

And then I go back to some pondering I did when I was reading a lot of sci-fi. All (well, most) science fiction attempts to predict the future. And all (not most) science fiction is a product of its time. Sometimes an author will get it right and predict the future, most of the time they don't. The message is generally in line with the thoughts of the day, albeit on the cutting edge. Or something like that. I have more important things to think about right now!

I settle on a top-down shooter, Alliance Corsair. Not gonna lie, it's kind of meh, and I was expecting the control scheme to be a lot less primitive. To its credit, there is a story, but it's really bad and even I know it's implausible, and the voice acting is absolutely abhorrent.

I put the Puddle Jumper in autopilot mode (don't ask, I don't know) and get absorbed into the game. About a minute in I realize that I should probably not be so distracted, so I set an alarm to go off five minutes before the predicted arrival.

Then and only then do I get adsorbed into the game.

On the clock, five minutes before the invasion, the alarm goes off. It force closes my game and nukes all the progress I've made. You'd think by 2183 they'd figure out how to write an operating system that doesn't do that.

Oh well. Better get set for the invasion. I feel like a bit of an asshole treating a tragic event like some kind of non-tragic event like a movie or a play or something and that metaphor is falling apart now. I promised drones and maybe a gunship. In retrospect, I probably should have prepped before playing casual games. Even in the future I am irresponsible.

_set_alias StandardDrone drone;  
Alias drone set!  
set_alias GunShip gunship;  
Alias gunship set!_

There. Now I have some drones I can spawn in when I need to, where I need to. And a gunship or a million.

And of course I don't actually have comms with anyone. Maybe I can patch into their suits?

A little fiddling with the omni-tool and I'm in. I expected it to require me to enter a 37-character GUID or something, but nope. I guess the main purpose of these things is communication after all.

"Is this thing on?" I say clumsily. Is that a thing?

"Yes." That was Annoyed Ash.

"I found some drones."

"Copy that." That was Curt Ash.

While I'm fucking around with all this, the Reaper/Geth forces have begun to arrive.

There's a lot of activity on the ground, but I can't really see what's going on- it just looks like a bunch of dots shifting and lights flashing. The sky, however, is a flurry of activity. There's the big scary fucker descending out of the clouds like the hand of God or something. Hi, Sovereign. It's surrounded by lots of little guys, I'm assuming they're Geth dropships. There's other ships headed toward them and little flashes of fire. That means the Alliance is engaging, which is a good sign.

Perhaps needlessly, I speak into the comm system, "They're here."

Let's rock.


End file.
